Name him “God-with-us”

DATE: December 22, 2013
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 1:18-25
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

Joseph could have had her stoned to death. It was within his rights. They were betrothed, which means they’d already completed the first of the two steps in the marriage transaction. Legally, Mary and Joseph were bound together, but they didn’t yet live together. And yet she was pregnant. And that pregnancy brought shame on Joseph, on his house, on her parents. He could taste it, that shame, bitter as day-old coffee; could feel it like the piercing eyes of disapproving neighbors.

He wished it were otherwise, but the damage had been done and could not be undone. It would remain, like an ugly scorch mark in the wood he worked for a living, a blemish on his good name. He had not been man enough to hold her attention, keep her affections for himself. His face burned with disgrace.

But he could not condemn her to death. He could not imagine turning her over to an angry crowd. What would be gained? Only more shame, more grief. Still, the marriage could not continue. He needed to make a clean break. So he would dismiss her quietly, and hope the neighbors might soon forget and shift their attention to some other local scandal. Mary would have a hard time of it, no question, alone with a child, dependent on her parents. Who would marry her now? But that could not be his concern; after all, she had brought this on herself…

Then came the dream, and Joseph’s world shifted, turned upside down by an angel … or maybe it was right side up? Because that’s what angels do, isn’t it? They never leave us quite like they find us. When the Spirit of God enters our lives, when we find ourselves face to face with Divine Mystery, everything has a way of turning topsy-turvy. It’s a dizzying experience, breath-taking, life-changing. Just ask Mary.

Of course, Joseph hadn’t believed that bit about the angel appearing to Mary, not until he had his own encounter. Now, he found himself less certain about the things that had always seemed so clear: husbands should manage their wives; Mary should be banished; he had a duty to preserve his honor; and more certain about a few things that had seemed outrageous only hours before, like: God is up to something remarkable on behalf of God’s people; Mary has been enlisted; and Joseph has a part to play, alongside Mary, even if it means facing public shame.

The angel made Joseph see that he and Mary were in this together; that is, if he had the courage to say ‘yes’ to God.

Which Mary had already done.

Funny, that one should use the word, ‘courage’ to speak about believing an angel, marrying a disgraced woman and embracing the baby. Funny, that he should be choosing this path based on something he saw in a dream. What would the neighbors think? That he was crazed, weak or gullible? But suddenly, what the neighbors thought didn’t seem to matter. What God thought, mattered much, much more. And God seemed to think that Joseph was worthy of this role, that he could do this thing: Support Mary, raise this child, survive the scorn. “You shall call him Jesus.” The angel had said. “You shall name him.” In that time and place, to name a child was to adopt him. So the angel was really saying, “Claim this baby as your own flesh and blood; name him and make him your own.” Mary had been chosen to be this child’s mother. And Joseph? He had been chosen, too.

Having courage, says social scientist Brene Brown, means being willing to show up and be seen.¹ It’s bringing to the table our whole selves, all that we are and all that we value, gifts and foibles, regardless of what others might think or say. That’s what Joseph did, in the end. He showed up. He agreed to be a part of the story, even before he knew how it would all turn out. He agreed to embrace Mary and that baby even though it exposed him to public ridicule, even though he had no idea how to do this thing he’d been asked to do. He could have said, ‘No thank you.’ He could have let those scornful voices, those piercing eyes, or his own nagging doubts, hold sway. Instead, he took a deep breath, and a big risk, and said yes.

And come to think of it… that’s what God did, too. That’s what the Christmas story is all about. The Gospel of Matthew quotes words from the prophet Isaiah: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

Isaiah probably meant that the child would be a sign, a symbol of God’s presence with the Israelite people, not that the child would be God. That came later. By the time the Gospel of Matthew was written, a more radical claim was being made: that in the child born to Mary, God had come to us, had taken on flesh, become incarnate. In the words of our United Church of Christ statement of faith, “God came to us to share our common lot.”

Our common lot. Our ordinary, difficult, embodied lives — lives full of pleasure and pain, worry and wonder, scraped knees and sweaty palms, pounding hearts and broken dreams. Like all biographies, this one started with a birth, an ordinary, which is to say, messy, birth. A baby slipped out into the world, took his first breath and let out a wail, as most babies do. New parents washed that tiny body, counted ten fingers and ten toes, marveled at the slightly-squished looking face and delicate skin, then wrapped him up in bands of cloth, as if to hold his fragile body together and protect it from all harm. Mary put that baby to her breast, clumsy at first, and worried about whether she had enough milk. After a few false starts, the baby got the hang of it, and nursed contentedly until he fell asleep in her arms.

And that, according to the story, was God. That hungry, suckling newborn with long lashes and damp, curly hair was somehow, mysteriously, outrageously, God incarnate. God in the flesh. God made profoundly vulnerable. He would grow up, of course, exchange one kind of vulnerable for another. Exchange bare toes for sandals and a crib for a walking stick. He’d venture out into the world where Mary and Joseph could not protect him; he’d face his own public ridicule, be mocked and spat upon, betrayed and beaten before the end.

In Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, the main character has this to say when he first hears the Christian story: “This son…who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put up with followers who don’t get it and opponents who don’t respect him — what kind of God is that? It’s a god on too human a scale, that’s what.” (p. 55-56)

A god on too human a scale. Yes, that’s it: A god who wept, but also laughed; who raged, but also loved. That’s what we’re told. It’s what we sing: “Veiled in flesh, the God-head see; hail the incarnate deity, pleased on earth with us to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel…[Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn king.’]” But is it real? This story? Does it tell the gospel truth?

If you’ve had your doubts, you are in good company. For two thousand years, faithful Christians have tried to wrap their minds and hearts around this claim that Jesus was somehow both human and divine. Councils have been conducted, creeds written, rejected and re-cast. These days, we don’t bring it up much. If anything, the question may embarrass us: to say that God really became human, it’s an affront to our 21st century scientific minds, an awkward proposition, a scandal of the intellect. Still, we don’t want to make a public scene; best just to dismiss the matter quietly.

Unless, of course, there’s something to it. Something that matters. Something life-saving. If I were to wade into this fray, as it seems I am doing, if I were to risk a response to that generations’ old question, is the story real? I would say this: Yes: As real as angels that unsettle our dreams. As honest as a baby’s hunger. As true as poetry. In the Deathly Hallows, last book in JK Rowling’s series about a young wizard named Harry Potter, Harry has an otherworldly conversation with the great wizard Dumbledore. “Is this real?” He asks. “Or has this been happening inside my head?” “Of course it’s happening inside your head,” Dumbledore replies. “But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

There is something real, something powerful and transforming, about the claim that God chose, God chooses, to experience life on a human scale, for the sake of turning our lives, and the world, right side up. In the words of teacher and writer Parker Palmer, “[Christianity] is a story about God taking the risk of showing up in the flesh and all that comes with it. I think that’s a risk that we’re all pulled to: the risk of incarnation; the risk of embodying our values and beliefs…the risk of being fully human.”²

Maybe God’s showing up helps us to summon the courage to show up ourselves…to lean into the scary, vulnerable, risky business of bringing our whole selves to the table. What would that look like, I wonder? Maybe, it looks like asking for help when we need it, or naming our fears, or weeping in public — or weeping at all. Maybe it’s admitting when we feel out of control. Maybe it looks like throwing caution to the winds, sharing something you’ve created, pursuing a dream or singing in the choir; maybe it’s confronting prejudice, beginning with our own — doing the hard and tender work of dismantling the ‘isms in our life; maybe it’s telling someone “I’m gay,” or “I’m Christian” or “I don’t understand…” or “I’m sorry,” or “I love you.”

God knows: showing up like that — saying ‘yes!’ — takes courage. It’s likely to give us sweaty palms and pounding hearts. But it’s what gives us the strength to hold one another’s pain, bear one another’s burdens and experience one another’s joy; it’s also likely to put us face to face with Divine Mystery, which means our lives will never be quite the same again. Just ask Joseph.

Here’s the good news: The angel said, “Do not be afraid…” The angels always say, “Don’t be afraid.” Why? Because God’s love trumps fear. God’s love, as tangible as human touch, as real as a baby’s cry, God’s love is at large. And in the words of the Rev. Mary Luti, “Love does not require worth; love bestows it.”³ God has already declared us worthy, has named us and claimed us and given us all a part to play. So let the neighbors talk. We have more important matters to attend to: angels to host, dreams to pursue, communities to mend and God-with-us to welcome. Come, Emmanuel, come.

Scripture Texts

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.